Different genders, different worlds

By Joanne McGrath Cohoon, Associate Professor, University of Virginia.

Gender inequality persists. Both data and personal reports from transgendered people make this reality clear. For example, transgendered men received more workplace respect and more opportunities to speak than they had as women. Their observations illustrate how subtly and profoundly gender affects our lives, even the lives of exceptional people.

Culturally, gendered expectations of others and ourselves interact with race and class to shape our language, our interrelations, and our beliefs about what we might achieve and where we belong. Organizations in our immediate environment also affect us at each stage of our lives —schools; businesses; churches, temples, mosques; etc. Each has its own set of policies, practices, and local cultures that differentiate more or less between men and women. So, if Steve Jobs had been a woman, he would have lived in a different world than the world he knew as a man.

«Jobs lived in a world where technical interests, technical education, and aggressive business behavior were appropriate. Had Jobs been a woman, his behavior may not have been interpreted in such a positive light»

Steve Jobs, the man, lived in a world where technical interests, technical education, and aggressive business behavior were appropriate. Investors saw potential for his success, because Jobs fit their expectations for technical business genius. Employees tolerated his eccentricities because they saw him as a successful leader. Had Jobs been a woman, his behavior may not have been interpreted in such a positive light.

Stephanie Jobs, the woman, could have behaved in the same ways, but her behavior would have been interpreted differently. By violating expected behavior for women, she would have incurred harsh judgments about her likability, even if people thought her competent. And being thought competent would require performance several times better than Steve would have needed.

Stephanie would have had less opportunity than Steve to develop skills that contribute to success in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). She might have been explicitly discouraged from taking elective STEM courses. Had she taken the courses anyway, she would have experienced isolation, stereotype threat, and less encouragement than her male classmates. Investors would likely have failed to see beyond her femininity to recognize her vision and ability to carry it out. Employees might have labeled her a crazy bitch and refused to contribute their passion in fulfillment of her dreams.

«Stephanie Jobs might have been wildly successful as a high tech entrepreneur and innovator, but she would have had to overcome many more barriers than Steve overcame»

Stephanie Jobs might have been wildly successful as a high tech entrepreneur and innovator, but she would have had to overcome many more barriers than Steve overcame. An astonishing achievement would have been even more spectacular, unless of course, the world changed at the same time Steve’s gender changed. 

It is difficult to know whether we are moving toward a world where Steve and Stephanie have equal chance of success. Obviously, women are advancing in education and economic independence in many countries. Yet, even in those countries where women seem to have the most parity with men, occupational gender segregation persists: women, more than men, are in fields with fewer economic rewards, less autonomy, and lower job satisfaction.

The European Women’s Lobby on the Role of Recognition

By Signe Kristine Nørgaard, guest writer for The European Women’s Lobby (EWL).

Could a woman do Steve’s job? Yes, of course. But the status and fame she would acquire are unlikely to bring her anywhere close to the adulation accorded to Steve Jobs, as Siri Hustvedt pointed out in her contribution to this blog. Whether we talk about pioneers at the frontiers of innovation or culture-bearing institutions, we witness the same tendency: when women enter a new (or old) male dominated field, the mysticism evaporates along with much of the status and pay. Consider how prestige and status have escaped historically masculine bastions such as education, the arts, politics and medicine proportionally to the degree of ‘feminisation’, the causality of which has been discussed superbly by Swedish historian Yvonne Hirdman.^[1]

What excludes women from IT is not the hype and mysticism, but the gendered exclusivity which they symbolise. Inclusion on the other hand means breaking the gendered spell and a subsequent drop in prestige. Of course it is not all that black and white. This could not be further from a biological or essentialist argument. IT is a vast and rather abstract ‘sector’ hardly reserved for men, but there are forces at play which de facto makes it mainly a male domain. It matters little if we are talking about IT or other prestigious sectors dominated by men or rather, masculine values and attributes. The IT sector is symptomatic of the issues worth investigating here. No more, no less.

«IT is a vast and rather abstract ‘sector’ hardly reserved for men, but there are forces at play which de facto makes it mainly a male domain»

Having provided certain insights into the past and current situation, the pressing question is what we can do to change it. As has been brought up several times on this blog, taking to task gendered stereotypes and role models is an important step towards increasing women’s stake in the sector. And we must go beyond that. Comprehensively overthrowing gendered stereotypes requires that we confront the gendered value system itself. From this perspective, asking what it would take for a woman to do Steve’s job and win his glory is not good enough. Can we even imagine the same hype, prestige and monetary value attributed to, say, an outstanding woman working in the care sector? We might not yet be able to envision this scenario, but the point is we need to develop that ability!

IT or care economy. We know that the first sector does not exceed the latter in economic or societal importance. But we also know that the societal valuation of the contributions of these sectors by no means reflects this reality. This discrepancy can be linked to the age-old political discussion about production vs. reproduction on the one hand and on the other it is a pressing socio-economic problem. Above all it is a gender issue. The gender segregation in the IT and care sectors is not a law of nature, nor are the distorted valuations of these sectors’ respective contributions or associated gender pay gaps. Therefore the most tangible benchmark for progress is the level of gendered pay and pension gaps and of gender segregation in the labour markets. But the solution must be found taking a more ethereal road through our minds. So long as society (women and men) subscribes to masculinised ideals, women’s work, regardless of the sector, will remain undervalued in terms of pay and prestige.

«So long as society subscribes to masculinised ideals, women’s work, regardless of the sector, will remain undervalued in terms of pay and prestige»

This is not a battle between the sexes, but merely a matter of how recognition operates. Recognition, like respect, is not something one can claim, but something one must be given; the double meaning of recognition being key here: the way men successfully achieve recognition (acknowledgement) from each other is to a great extent dependent on their societally-rooted culture for mutual recognition in the sense that they ‘recognise’ (know, see and understand) each other. A woman achieving a position equivalent to Steve Jobs’ depends on affecting profound social change, but also on women’s ability to strengthen mutual recognition on their own terms by affirming what we already know: the deep awareness of the indispensable role of our contributions whether they are productive or reproductive. All the proof we need is already there. We need to operationalise this evidence and start formalising the means (institutional, capitalist, symbolic, communicative etc.) to give ourselves the recognition we know we deserve.

Footnote:
1. Her profound investigation of gendered culture, symbols and values is synthesized in the work Genus – det stabilas föranderliga former (the mutable shapes of stability). She develops a 'gendered power system' which refers to historically embedded, set of gendered values and symbols, which permeate our daily language and norms. Due to this inherited symbolic system "the masculine" is automatically attributed greater value than the "feminine". What is understood as 'masculine' and 'feminine' can change radically, but the gendered power system remains stable because power, value, prestige and status accrues to the ever 'masculine'. According to this logic attributes with feminine connotations can later on be adopted as 'masculine' attributes and so switch from low to high status, only now they are no longer 'feminine'.

Paddling against the wind

By Teresa Torns, professor, Department of Sociology at the Autonomous University of Barcelona.

If Steve Jobs had been a woman, that woman would have been an excellent student, since that was the essential passport to being something more than a good mother and wife. Given her good grades in mathematics and her interest in computers, perhaps she would have chosen to study engineering. But arriving at university saw her encounter some unexpected surprises. Firstly, that of discovering that very few girls had joined her in her choice, with most of her classmates being boys. Secondly, the absence of female teachers. Small disadvantages that dispirited her, given that she would rarely be able to talk about the issues of interest to a girl, like her, whose life was organized and designed exclusively by ICT. The overall memory of those years is that the university environment was too boy-friendly; an environment that she learned to overcome with a survival strategy of invisibility which included concealing her excellent grades.

However, these grades were what got her her first job in a company in the technology sector; a job that she did not hesitate to accept, even though that was the moment when the surprising of the young student doubled. This was mainly because the excitement of landing her first job soon vanished when the working conditions and her salary were not what she was expecting. In the beginning, she blamed these disappointments on the crisis that was affecting her country, but she soon suspected that perhaps that was not a very good explanation. Colleagues with inferior academic records who endured such drawbacks because they were juniors had, after the first five years, a better professional career, more recognition and a better salary.

«At university, a female Jobs would have encountered some unexpected surprises, such as the scarcity of female classmates and the absence of female teachers»

After consulting with a few specialists, she relaxed. She learned to put a name to what was happening to her. It was the glass ceiling, a form of employment discrimination that affected women who were professionally best-placed, particularly female engineers in the field of ICT. So she realised that what was happening to her was nothing unusual and she was able to think of new and better solutions. In the short term, there was no need to increase her availability at work, putting her relationship at risk, as well as her plans to be a mother again, and even her health.

The best thing would probably be to change jobs. She would look for a company that used the potential of ICT to support teleworking. Or she would explore the possibility of becoming a web-based professional, so that she would always be able to combine her everyday life with her knowledge and capabilities. She was lucky to live during the age of the internet, where it was said that everything was possible. Thanks to the blog she had created during her first maternity leave, she had heard about the project launched by “Les Pénélopes” which, using ICT, offered support to immigrant women employed in informal sectors.

«She would have suffered the glass ceiling, a form of employment discrimination that affected women who were professionally best-placed, particularly female engineers in the field of ICT»

Colleagues had told her about the shortages in long-term care services. Perhaps she could explore the organisation and management of these services through an internet application and offer it to social healthcare companies. Or perhaps she could start a consultancy to promote the use of ICT among rural women. She knew about the existence of the digital divide. Perhaps she could increase ICT use by bringing the possibilities it offered to the daily needs of those women. She would only need to persevere and be optimistic. European statistics from She Figures 2012 show how, between 2002 and 2012, the proportion of female engineers and technologists employed in the public sector had increased, for the first time. She would just need to forget about surprises and get to work.

What if Steve Jobs had been a woman?

By Juliet Webster, Gender and ICT Programme (IN3, UOC) Director

We have seen huge improvements in gender equality in recent decades. Women have made major advances in key areas of social life: in the world of work, in educational access and performance, and in securing and exercising political and social rights.

However, there are persistent and stubborn forms of gender inequality. The gap between men's and women's pay remains significant: throughout the EU, women earn on average 18% less than their male counterparts with equivalent qualifications and experience. Women also remain remarkably under-represented in top jobs, disappearing from career ladders as they ascend. Even though today women make up about 60% of university graduates in the EU (often with better qualifications than their male counterparts), they are only 16.1% of board members of Fortune 500 companies. And persistent labour market segregation means that women continue to be over-represented in low-status, low-skill, and low-paid service jobs. This both bolsters inequality and simultaneously under-utilises a huge potential talent pool.

«We are seeing major transformations in our ways of communicating, working, accessing services, being citizens —transformations in which gender identities and relations are central—. But where are the women shapers of these changes?»

Despite this stubborn lack of progress, at another level we are seeing major transformations in our ways of communicating, working, accessing services, being citizens —transformations in which gender identities and gender relations are central—. But where are the women shapers of these changes? About 25% of all employees work in high technology knowledge intensive services, but only 2.4% of those are women. These are occupations which have high-status, high influence, and high pay. Given the centrality of these activities and their associated technologies to us all, it is deeply worrying that women are so noticeably under-represented there.

It is sometimes assumed that if women do not enter computing, engineering or other technological occupations, it is because they simply do not want to. In our increasingly individualised societies, in which we all apparently exercise autonomy, self-determination and, above all, choice, feminist ambitions to dismantle patriarchy and its structuring social relations are often seen as outdated. Yet women have been fairly consistently under-represented in —and sometimes actively excluded from— technological work over time and across cultures. This points to a deeper problem. Power relations, differences in access to both technical and social capital, stereotypes, and constrained social roles, all affect the real choices that individual women can exercise in their educational and career pathways. This is well-known. There is much less consensus about how to address these issues in practical terms, and what implications —for women, for societies, and also for the technologies— would flow from a more equal gender balance in technological endeavours.

«In a society where we all apparently exercise autonomy, self-determination and, above all, choice, feminist ambitions to dismantle patriarchy and its structuring social relations are often seen as outdated»

So what if Steve Jobs had been a woman? During the late 1970s, when both Jobs and Steve Wozniak were building their first computers and simultaneously the Apple company, computing was a highly masculine playground. It had not always been so, but by the time these two men, and their counterparts in other computing companies, were constructing the forerunners of today's world-dominating computer systems, women had been edged out of the field, never to return in significant numbers. What would have happened if they had remained, and had played a central, or even a dominating, role in the development of today's systems? Perhaps, instead of Microsoft, Google and Apple, we would today have high-tech companies founded and run by women? Perhaps more pluralism of approaches to computing? Different designs? Different labour practices? Who knows which revolutions would have happened —how the sector, the technologies, and our Information Society, or societies, would have unfolded— if we had had not only a Steve Jobs but also a female, equal, counterpart to him.